Obtaining a 1937 Ariel NH Red Hunter
One day in 2019 I was perusing my personal email when I found an intriguing one from the Motorcycle group of the Vintage Car Club that I belong to. Someone was advertising a couple of motorcycles for sale, a 1950 Triumph Speed Twin (500cc) and a 1937 Ariel NH Red Hunter (350cc), but there were no pictures. Wow, those were my kind of bikes, I phoned the seller who asked me which bike I was interested in, ‘Both!’, I replied and arranged to view the bikes on the following Saturday.
When I arrived at Vic’s house, he invited me into the small room behind the front door and there was the Triumph Speed Twin, with the Ariel under a sheet. The Triumph looked quite good, he’d done a lot of miles on it so it had some patina, the fuel tank hadn’t been painted very well and it also had the sprung hub on the rear wheel which I’d heard can be troublesome, hmm, I was interested in a mediocre kind of way.
I then asked to look at the Ariel, whereupon he removed the sheet, and there it was – wow, it was just spectacular. It had been restored and only done 100 miles before sitting in his house for 20 years, so it was in fantastic condition and had everything you’d want in a pre-war motorcycle, twin high-pipes, a chrome tank with painted panels, a full set of instruments and chrome wheel rims with nicely painted centers – it was great. Of course, it was a non-runner so I couldn’t fire it up or take it out for a ride, but in my typical ridiculously optimistic way I didn’t think there’d be much to getting it up and running. Vic had restored one bike a year since he’d retired before thinning down his huge collection to fit a Ford Model A in his garage – I had to think he knew what he was doing. I then went away and thought about it overnight, and the next day, suffering from FOMO, I called Vic and told him I’d take the Ariel.
The following Saturday I picked up the bike and brought it home; the fuel tank was very clean, so I threw some petrol in it, turned the fuel tap on and tried kicking it over. Not surprisingly, nothing happened, I soon found the carburetor had fuel gushing out of it, it was hopelessly flooded. The carb in question was an original Amal remote float type which are known to be troublesome. I took the carb off, disassembled the remote float, cleaned it out, reassembled it, threw it back on and had another go. The fuel no longer gushed out but was still flooding a bit, so I tried to start it.
Now, with pre-war motorcycles they typically have a few more controls than modern bikes, you have the choke of course, but they also possess an ignition advance-retard lever and a decompression lever. The decompression lever allows you to lift the exhaust valve from its seat, thereby lowering the compression and allowing you to kick the engine over very easily. This is very handy for priming the cylinder and starting the machine without risking a broken leg from a kick back. All these controls meant there were various combinations of levers to try and get the engine started and I know from experience no two bikes are the same. So over time I tried a heap of different combinations of lever settings, as well as priming, or not priming the carb. I met a rider on another pre-war Ariel Red Hunter who advised that the last thing you should do is try to start the engine with the fuel tap on, go figure!
One Saturday night, I got the engine to run for about 10 seconds, wow it made a loud doof, doof noise which belied the fact that it was only a 350cc and sounded great. Unfortunately, I couldn’t repeat that, so with Christmas holidays approaching I dropped it into a friendly motorcycle garage and asked for some help. A couple of days later, he rang to say the carb is all sorted and it’s good to go. When I picked it up he showed me the correct starting procedure – no priming, choke on, advance-retard lever about half-way, kick it over a few times while holding the decompression lever open, then get it on compression, hold the decompression lever open again, kick it over, then quickly release the decompression lever – simple. When he did this, it started first attempt and idled nicely.
While all this was happening, I had the ‘Vic’s Bike’ magnetic signs made up, took a photo and emailed it to the man himself. He reckoned when he saw it he felt quite emotional.
So, now all I had to do was take it out and get some first-hand experience of a girder rigid bike, woohoo.
Riding a girder rigid bike
If you’ve never ridden a girder rigid bike, it’s a unique experience, the first thing that you notice is the girder forks work better than you’d expect and it can become quite captivating watching them nod up-and-down in front of you. They do soak up a lot of the bumps and dips in the road but you don’t want to get too distracted by them though, as pot-holes of any size can be jarring and need to be avoided.
Riding the Ariel is quite a satisfying, pleasureable experience, I get quite a buzz riding it and because you’re nearly sitting on the rear mudguard there seems like there is a lot of bike in front of you, as indeed there is – a fuel tank full of instruments, handlebars full of controls and then the complex girder forks and an oversize headlamp!
I’m not sure if bikes with high pipes are noisier than those with standard pipes, (maybe because they’re closer to your ears?) or perhaps my bike has no baffles in the silencers, but riding is quite a noisy affair. Indeed, riding on a bumpy road with the noise can start to be fatiguing after an hour or so, I can’t imagine how guys rode these for hours on end back in the day.
The rigid rear end can also be quite interesting, there’s nothing like the first time you go around a corner with a bit of a lean on, and hit a bump and the bike seems to skip sideways, but I don’t think it’s as unsafe as it feels – at least I hope not.
My first few rides included a few unscheduled stops as I was just throwing a bit of gas in the tank and heading out, going further than intended and then running out of dinosaur juice. The reserved setting on the fuel tap didn’t seem to add any extra, either which wasn’t helpful.
I have to say this bike has been added to my list of ‘keepers’, as it’s quite a looker and provides a great riding experience, although I’d love to have a crack at the 500cc ‘RH’ version for a bit of added oomph!